If you would, turn to Romans 14. We're getting near to the end of this series. Romans 14 is, I think, one of the more important application chapters in the New Testament, because it's one that I think sometimes a lot of folks are not that familiar with it, and it's helpful. But I do want to read a couple of background verses to give some context. I introduced Romans 14 a week ago, just a little bit. But Romans 14 is largely about preferences. different kinds of preferences, but he picks two particular areas that were the preferences that people were fighting over at this point in time. Food and holidays, basically. And so we'll look at that, but to give some context for it, let's start in a verse in Mark. This is the book of Mark, chapter 7. Mark chapter 7 and verse 15. So this will be Jesus talking. And I'll read verse 14 for context there, but it's Mark 7, 14 and 15. When he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, hearken unto me every one of you and understand, and listen to verse 15, there's nothing from without a man that entering into him can defile him. He's talking about what you eat and drink. And yet, you know, think about this in a context of him talking to Jewish people. This is shocking because they did have dietary restrictions under the law. And he's not saying that under the law you Jewish people can eat pigs and shrimp, but what he is saying is Those things aren't what really defiles a person. You know, you had folks who could stand up and boast that they always tithed and they never had a piece of bacon in their life and they'd always kept all the feasts of Israel and all 613 commands and go on and on and on. And Jesus is saying, you know, nothing from without a man that entering in him can defile him, but the things which come out of him, it's not what goes down the tube, it's what's coming out of your mouth that reveals what's in the heart. Those are the things that defile men. So Jesus says something about that fast forward to Acts chapter 10 Acts chapter 10 And I'm gonna look at about verse 10 so acts 10 10 Acts 10 verse 10 says He became very hungry and would have eaten, but while they made ready, he fell into a trance. This is speaking of the apostle Peter, of course. And he saw heaven opened. This is one of the places in scripture where somebody has a dream and God uses that dream in some way to provide some direct revelation. He saw heaven opened. And a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet, knit at the four corners and let down to the earth. And if you think about what that looked like, like I said, we have this wonderful drawing on the wall from Etiakason, it's based on this passage. Wherein all men are a four-footed beast of the earth and wild beasts and creeping things and fowls of the earth. So this isn't just the clean animals, it's the unclean ones. And there came a voice to him, rise Peter, kill and eat. Peter, he said this before, these two words ought never to be hooked together. No, Lord, but he's done it before and he'll do it here. Not so, Lord. What an odd thing to say. God says, I've set a table before you sit down and eat. No, no, no. No. I know better than you, God, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. Never once in His life. You think people would boast of that? When you decide that your righteousness is based on those kinds of things, as a lot of the Jewish people have misunderstood, you might make these claims. And God is speaking to him, and He says, what God has cleansed that call not thou common. This was done thrice, three times. He wanted to make the point. You know, Peter's the one that would have a dialogue. It's recorded in Galatians chapter 2, and we won't go there. But Paul is there eating with Gentiles in the church in Antioch. And the implication is he's probably eating Gentile food. Paul was Jewish, but he understood his liberty in Christ. He could have bacon. And there he is, eating with the Gentiles, and Peter is too. Peter's got a ham sandwich stuck in his mouth. About time some people come from Jerusalem, some of those Jews, and they don't eat ham sandwiches. And it's just scandalous. And they start, Peter, what are you doing? You know, you can't be righteous and eat a ham sandwich. And Peter quickly pulls that ham sandwich out of his mouth, sits at a different table from the Gentiles, and joins with them. Paul says, I withstood him to his face. So we have this issue of food. And it gets to a bigger issue, though, of personal convictions. Personal convictions. That is, this area in the Bible where the Bible hasn't said, thou shalt not. But there's a lot of people who believe thou shalt not. And it is a personal conviction. It involves food. It involves drink. It involves holy days. And there are certainly other things that can go on the list. And we may touch on a few of those. Let me let me move to Galatians 4 Go to Galatians 4 and we talked about food just real quickly, but let's look at let's look at days of the week There's an entire denomination if you'll call it that that Supposedly a Christian denomination. There's a lot of problems, but they They're they're I guess most prominent features that they will only go to church on Saturday And they teach the idea of keeping the Sabbath. Most Gentiles don't know what the Sabbath is, even if they think they're keeping the Sabbath. Because the Sabbath isn't just one day a week on Saturday. The Sabbath is one year out of every seven. You're not allowed to work. I've never met someone who keeps the Sabbath but quits their job on the seventh year. I'm just telling you the facts of it. So we need to be careful about going down that road. There's nowhere in the Bible that says Sunday is the new Sabbath. There's clearly apostolic practice from the earliest days of Christianity of gathering together on Resurrection Day, Sunday, not once a year for Easter, every Sunday. That's apostolic practice so that in Revelation 1 it's called the Lord's Day. That expression, the Lord's Day, had become commonly circulated early on in church history so that it could be said in Revelation 1 without any explanation, because all Christians knew that meant Sunday. So we have that. But this idea of Sabbath-keeping has, to some degree, plagued the church throughout history, and people will go so far as to say, well, you're not going to heaven if you don't keep the Sabbath and worship on the Sabbath. If you want to worship on the Sabbath, you should. You might want to worship every day of the week. What does Romans 12 say? To offer your body a living sacrifice? That's not something you do on Sunday. That's a life. So we have this Galatians 4 where Paul expressly deals with this issue of holy days because people had come into these churches in Galatia after Paul had settled the churches and they're telling them exactly what the Seventh-day Adventist, and some other groups, now teach. You've got to keep this day. You can't eat this food. You've got to get circumcised. Paul comes into this letter, and he says, I won't read it, but he says in chapter 3, who's bewitched you? How can you start off as a Christian in the Spirit? You become justified in Christ in the Spirit, and yet you want to Perfect or sanctify by the flesh. You cannot do it. He says that so you get to Galatians 4 8 How be it then when you knew not God you did service unto them? Which by nature are no gods, but now he's talking about their idolatrous past But now after that you have known God you become a Christian or rather are known of God how turn you again to the weak and beggarly elements where until you desire again to be in bondage and What are these weak and beggarly elements? You would think, well, it must be some terrible idolatry. They've gone back to some heinous sin. Look at what it is. You observe days. He's getting on to them because they came out of, quote, religion. And religion said if you'll keep all the days and keep all the fasts and do this and do that and not touch this and not touch that, God has to open the doors to heaven for you, and he's come in and said that's not true. That's what he just said. After you've known God, or rather are known of God, you're established, or God's established a relationship with you because, you know, to all those who've received Christ, to them he gave power to become sons of God. It's recognizing that God's doing the saving. We're receiving a free gift. And yet you're returning to keeping days and all that. You observe days and months and times and years. I'm afraid of you, lest I bestowed upon you labor and vain. He's afraid, not that they're going to lose their salvation, but his labor was so that these people would live in grace their whole lives, not so that they would return to bondage to whether it's Jewish law or pagan laws, but religion is religion in that sense. He says, I'm afraid I've acted in vain. So you see there what he's saying about the days and laws. Now one more reference, and then we'll move back to Romans, and this is Colossians 2. So, if someone says to you, you have to keep the Sabbath, you see where that's a problem with what Paul's saying? Now, look in Colossians 2, right after Philippians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Chapter 2, verse 13, he says, and you, it's Colossians 2.13, you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together, he's made you alive together with him, that is with Christ, having forgiven you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting of ordinances. This is the law of the Old Testament. In particular, he probably has in mind that the Ten Commandments, not as saying about the keeping of them, but as symbolic of sort of the whole law as a covenant, like you're going to be righteous by law-keeping. Those have been blotted out that was against us. Why? We talked about this early in Romans, because we're not very good at keeping it. If my being saved, if my destiny in heaven depends on me being good enough, If it depends on my commitment to Christ being true, and me always walking the narrow road, I'm lost, and so are you. All those who teach that idea, that you've got to be a certain level of goodness forever, for the rest of your life, or you'll never see heaven, they set a standard they do not meet, and none of us do. And that's why that standard needed to be nailed to the cross. It says it was against us, because it wouldn't save us. It showed us our destiny. It showed us that we're sinners. And it was contrary to us, and it's saying God took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. His cross. See, the covenant with Moses has been nailed to the cross. That was a covenant between God and Israel, not between God and Gentiles. Anyone who looks to the Old Testament and says, here's this command that you keep the Sabbath, now you go do it, it's contract. I mean, I don't pay your rent, and I don't ask you to pay mine. And you're not obligated under the law to pay my rent. Why? You're not a part of the contract. Or my house note, or my car note, you're not a part of that contract. Why would I think I'm obligated to pay your car note? So why would people go to the Old Testament saying, well, I'm obligated to pay Israel's note? And then you say, but how long does a contract last? Once you die, guess what? They can't make you pay. Now, I know in modern law, we have the idea of suing somebody's estate. In the ancient world, once you died, you're out of the contract. I tell you this, once you die, you can't deliver the services. I had a contract years ago with an expert going to deliver his testimony in a case for us as an expert on construction. He literally died the morning he was to be deposed. What do you think I was going to do? Go down to the courthouse and say, Judge, you make him show up, right? It's absurd. God died in the first century. The God part of the contract died. That's how it got nailed to the cross. That's how it came to an end. But His blood, at the same moment that that contract with Moses, really with the people, the same moment that it came to an end, a new contract started. We call that the New Covenant. And, of course, it wouldn't make any sense if there wasn't a resurrection. So, just understand that. Now, look at His application to this now. It says, verse 15, having spoiled principalities and powers, this is talking about the resurrection, Jesus triumphing. He nailed the law of the cross and the death because it couldn't make us righteous, but He also didn't stay dead. He's a victor over the principalities and powers. He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. He was resurrected and showed Himself to a bunch of people. This was the big victory dance. Satan lost. Strike won. Let no man therefore judge you. You see his application of this? If the law got nailed to the cross, why are you judging people by eating catfish and shrimp? Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink. And this is where a lot of Baptists have just messed up. Now, I recognize we have a culture that has an alcohol problem. We have a culture where a lot of people have gotten families destroyed over alcohol. So I'm very reluctant. to ever, you know, to promote people, go drinking or whatever. But I'm also not going to judge anybody for it, because Jesus drank liquor. That's a fact. I mean, he kept the Jewish feast, and it was wine, but he did. And so, yeah, we have a lot of Baptists who have decided it's grape juice and all that, and they're not bad people. It's a personal conviction, but it's not scriptural. What the scripture is going to say to us is, If you believe you shouldn't have alcohol, whether it's because that's how you were raised, because you were in that Baptist background, that you thought it was grape juice, or because you may have a more personal reason. Maybe you've personally struggled with it. Maybe your father was an alcoholic and you won't touch it. Tabitha's father won't touch alcohol, never has, but his father died of it. His brothers died of it. It killed them. I can understand that. It's a personal conviction. And that's fine. What you can't do is try to make your conviction be imposed on other people. Because I tell you this, alcohol isn't the only thing that's taken people. People who can't control their food choices have died prematurely. People, and I've known a few of them, they're hip and cool. They're not going to wear a helmet when they drive their motorcycles. Is that a lot different? They've destroyed their families. Why? Because they didn't want to wear a helmet on a motorcycle. Okay? So there's a lot of bad choices people make that destroy their families. Leaving firearms out that are loaded. You got little children running around. I find it absurd. People do that. People make lots of bad choices and so you can get convictions and say, well, you can't have a firearm because somebody somewhere is so stupid they leave an unloaded firearm or a loaded firearm out for children to get it. I mean, just, and alcohol, it becomes a wisdom issue. And we're in a culture, though, that frankly can't handle their alcohol. It's a problem. The number of drunk driving deaths is alarming. So we have these issues and what we have to do as Christians, though, is separate personal convictions, wisdom, maybe it's just not wise to do certain things, from the Bible saying, thou shalt not. Paul says here very clearly, no man judge you in meat or in drink or and this is the part I want to get to, in respect of a, we would call it a holiday. Holiday, you realize, comes from the expression, holy day. If they can't judge any... I thought that the Jehovah's Witness told me, back in Jeremiah, there's this passage in, you can't have a Christmas tree. I don't... I could go back to the Jeremiah passage, there's nothing there about Christmas trees, there's Asherah poles, people nowadays don't know what they are. I need go no further than Colossians 2.16, They should not judge me in view of a holiday. I can celebrate Christmas. I've had people tell me I can't celebrate Easter. Let no man judge you in respect of keeping a holiday. A friend of mine in Miami keeps Hanukkah. He's Christian, but he likes keeping Hanukkah. He feels it's slightly less commercialized than Christmas. I think that's dubious. But he is at liberty to keep Hanukkah. And he's at liberty not to. I'm at liberty to keep Christmas. I'm at liberty to think that Sunday is a little better than, or more special than, or elevated above the other days of the week. I'm at liberty to treat it like any other day, I suppose, if I want. But there's this liberty of days. You know not all cultures celebrate birthdays. They don't. And they don't do it the same way. I mean, I'm just saying, we elevate days and it's a conviction, but don't make your conviction, thou shalt or thou shalt not, or of the new moon or the Sabbath. There it is explicitly. This one verse takes the entire underpinning for Adventism, Seventh-day Adventism, and says it's absurd. And so people do gymnastics to get around it. Let me say this as an aside. It's done. to manipulate and control people. Legalism is promoted to control and manipulate people. There even used to be someone at Berean, and she told me kind of her background of being in a group that did that, that was called the Worldwide Church of God at the time. Keep every Sabbath. They'd come over to your house and make sure you didn't have any nice new stuff because that might indicate that you had failed to give them the money. And they wanted to make sure that you weren't working. They'd just pop in on Saturday and make sure you're not working. Make sure, you know, manipulation and control is the name of the game when you get to these stuff where the scripture's just clear. So this issue of personal convictions is important because there are a lot of folks, and folks in pulpits in different places, who are using these convictions to control. Let's look back at Romans 14 then, and it'll make some sense in light of this background. Paul's saying, eat what you want, Keep the days you want, or not. But what happens when someone has a sincere belief that it is wrong to eat bacon? How do you deal with them? How do you sit at the same dinner table with them? And that's what Paul talks about here. So, he talks about this person in verse 1 as being weak in the faith. It's a maturity issue. They have not come to a full faith in the liberty they have in Christ. that they can keep or not keep a holy day, eat or not eat a meat. Him that's weak in the faith, he says you need to receive them. Embrace them. You don't need to beat them down because they have a personal conviction. Maybe because they've been saved out of Judaism and they've gone for 50 years of their life not eating pork and it just seems wrong to them. You say, well I need to prove to them it's wrong. I need to tell them. No you don't. Receive them. But not to doubtful disputations. Don't get in all the fighting about it. Why? God's doing a work in your life. Let God work. And at the right time, maybe you have that conversation, but you don't need to fight with him. For one believes he may eat all things. That's me. As long as it's not still moving around. Right? Brown it on one side, I'll eat it. A lot of people don't think that. Okay, but that's okay. It's okay if you want to be a vegetarian. It's not okay. If you say, thou shalt be a vegetarian, God requires it. There's a group of Christians that teach that, by the way. I mean, I'm not making this up. They're out there saying, you've got to be a vegetarian. Another, who is weak, eats herbs." That's the vegetarians and a lot of other people. And you say, no, again, he's not saying it's wrong. Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. He's talking about someone who is a vegetarian in this culture where a lot of meat was sacrificed to idols, and they didn't want to take, they just felt wrong as they become Christians that they might eat meat sacrificed to idols, and so they have this personal conviction. And they're fine to have that conviction. Let them eat the veggies. Just don't impose it on somebody else. So he says, let not him that eateth, by implication, eats whatever you want, despise him that doesn't. Don't despise the one that feels by personal conviction that they should just eat vegetables. And let not him which eateth not, that's the vegetarian, don't let them judge the one that eats. In other words, judging you, suggesting you're stepping outside the bounds of what God permits. For God hath received him. God has received him. So, who art thou to judge another man's servant? He's not talking about publicly flaunted sin, the sort of thing that is in First Corinthians. You've got a guy having a love affair with his stepmother and Paul calls him out and says, if you don't deal with him, When I get to the church in Corinth, I'm going to deal with them, and heads are going to roll." He says that, and here he says, don't judge. Why? Because he's talking about areas of personal conviction where the scripture has not said, thou shalt or thou shalt not. It's an area of Christian liberty, where because we have liberty from the law, and these dietary things, and the ceremonies, and keeping the five feasts are not obligatory on us. But he says don't judge people on those things. That's the context Who art thou that judges to his own master that be to Jesus Christ? He stands or falls yet. He shall be holding up for God is able to make him stand I wonder where he'll stand I'll suggest to you that God's doing a work in his life and this will come up in a couple of other verses he will stand at the bama and give an account for himself and That's why he realized At least in this area of personal convictions, if I have a personal conviction about something, I don't have to give an account to you. It's my business. And the only time it's not my business is if I try to make it your conviction. But it is Jesus' business, and you'll stand to give an account. And in one way it will matter, because if you espouse a rule that never should your tongue touch a drop of liquor, And when you go home and no one can see you, you're pulling out the JD and pumping it down. I've known some people like that. I knew when I heard them telling me you couldn't touch it, I'm like, I've been around a lot of drunks. That's a lot of them in my family. I know what their face looks like. I know how they talk and I know how they smell. And you're telling me don't drink, but that's what's filling the tank. I'm just telling you. You've had that. That's a problem. And you will stand before Christ. See, if it's your conviction and you don't live by that conviction, it's sin to you. It's going to say that here in Romans. It's going to say that. One man esteems a day above another. He says, you've got to keep the Sabbath. And that's fine. For him, it's a personal conviction to keep the Sabbath. I wish I could go every Saturday and not do a lick of work. I aspire to that. Another esteems every day alike. Another guy esteems every day alike. It may be because he doesn't think the Sabbath is special, or maybe he's able to not do any work any day of the week. But to him, one day and another, they're interchangeable. That's fine. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. See, it's convictions, personal convictions. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it as unto the Lord. He that doesn't regard the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord. That's the guy that eats everything, including shrimp and catfish. And he eats it to the Lord, and he gives God thanks for the food. And he that eateth not, this is the one that has a personal conviction. Not merely a dietary choice, because we all realize if we ate a lot less meat in this country, more veggies, right? That's healthy choices. And as we get older, the doctors tell us we have to. And you find yourself negotiating, right? But this is personal convictions. And he says, the person that does that, that is eating, you know, not eating the meat, to the Lord he eat if not. He does it to God because it's a personal conviction that that's what is right in his mind before God. And he still gives God the thanks for what he's eating. And that's good. See, he's moving the picture away from our preferences and our convictions to your relationship with God. For none of us live to himself, and no man dieth to himself. Christians live and die to Christ. That removes me or you as anybody's judge on these issues. It's between who they live and die for. For whether we live, we live under the Lord, and whether we die, we die under the Lord, and whether we live, therefore, or die, we are of the Lord's. He owns us. And so, I don't need to judge. You know, do I have a right? You're owned by Christ. He's the one you'll stand before, not me. And by the same token, you have no right to judge me in these issues of preferences and personal convictions where we don't have a scripture saying, thou shalt not. For to this end, living to God and being the Lord's, to this end Christ both died and rose and revived that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living. But why dost thou judge thy brother?" Now, this is judging him because he either keeps the Sabbath or he won't or he ate catfish or he didn't. Why are you doing that? Why do you set it not thy brother? There's nothing good coming out of this. For we all stand, here's that word again, stand. I said earlier it was standing before the judgment seat of Christ, here it is. We all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. This is to Christians. We're going to stand there without a defense attorney and give some account. This isn't with a view to purgatory. It's not with a view to whether you've been good enough to go to heaven. It is with a view to Christ lavishly rewarding you because he's approved you by living on faith. And if you had a personal conviction that you couldn't eat pork and you held to your personal conviction, that's a good thing. You should not violate your personal conviction, nor should someone else push you into violating your personal conviction. For it's written, as I live, sayeth the Lord, every knee shall bow to me. This is a verse we hear a lot, but I don't think we connect it as Paul does. He's talking about it, the Bema. Every knee will bow to me and every tongue shall confess to God. In the context of standing at the judgment, we're going to bow to the one who is our Lord. We are going to confess, we are going to to give our account. So then every one of us shall give an account of himself to God. And that's where that idea of giving your account for yourself, that's not something people made up, it's right here. Let us not therefore judge one another anymore. This is the kind of thing that would cause disunity in a church. And the thing is, nowadays, we're in a mostly Gentile churches, we'd have to look long and hard for somebody that just wouldn't touch a piece of bacon, but they're out there. But in this church, at this time, this was a big issue. But we might have some new preferences. We might have someone that thinks they can have a tattoo, and someone else that thinks, no, you can't. And someone else who says, well, is there something in the New Testament that says you can't? Just trying to push some buttons. Someone else says, well, you can't have your hair dyed. Well, you can dye it, but you can only dye it the natural color. You can't dye it blue. Is it in the New Testament? Is there something there? I'm just telling you how, you know, because I don't want us to look at this just as food and holy days, because we replace it with new convictions. And some people have convictions about certain things. Maybe they have a conviction that you can't wear earrings or something, or maybe you can, but you can't pierce your ear twice. You know a lot of people and I was reading on like Facebook someone saying you can't do these body piercings I'm thinking yeah, but this is a whole bunch of people that pierce the ears on one side. They've only done it once Telling people who have two piercings that you can't do that. This is personal convictions We need to be real careful about these things because that's who he's talking to We're gonna stand before God and give an accounting Paul says I know verse 14 and I'm persuaded by the Lord that that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it's unclean." You better live by your conviction. If you believe before God, it doesn't sit right with you, you shouldn't eat something, you shouldn't have a body piercing or a tattoo or whatever this other preference is, where there's not a clear scripture saying you can't do it, then keep it. Paul is convinced of his liberty. to eat whatever kind of food he wants, even if it's still moving around. If it's sushi, I know a lot of people just would never touch it. I don't have a problem with it. I don't like the head to still be on it, but I'll take it. Paul has this understanding he can eat all that stuff. But he says if you think something's unclean it's unclean as to you and you better not violate that conviction because that you will answer for But if I brother be grieved and this is where the where the rub comes in And and I've had this lecture to me a lot about about alcohol Well, you you got to stop drinking because you're gonna cause somebody to stumble. That's not quite what he says He says something quite different. He says if your brothers greed with thy meat now If you're eating bacon at home, your Jewish brother, Jewish Christian, who ain't at your house, has no idea you're eating the bacon unless you make a point to tell him, which you don't have to do. Nor do you have to stop eating the bacon because you're going to grieve him. How can you? He isn't at your house. But I tell you what, when you have him over your house, how about you not serve any pork? See? This isn't hard. And when it comes to a public meal, Paul would say, don't order the pork chops. You say, but I got a right to order them. He says, you don't have a right to harm this individual that you know has this strong conviction. God's doing a work in their life and you Christian can give up your liberty to some extent to do it. If your brothers greed with your meat, now walkest thou not charitably, destroy not him with thy meat. Don't destroy him. Because he has this conviction, because you're going to insist on still eating pork chops in front of them. Again, you put it in the context of the first century. They're eating meals together. They're doing it frequently. And you make a choice here to eat something else. Let not then your good, you are at liberty to have the pork chops. Don't let it be evil spoken of. For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink. This is scandalous. He's got a Jewish audience. You know, I know I'm going to be in the kingdom. I've never, what Peter said in Acts 10, I've never touched an unclean meat. And Paul says the kingdom of God is not meat or drink, but righteousness and peace. How are you going to have peace with this guy if it's really a problem? For them your conviction about the food item and and his convictions and they're at odds He says you stay in peace with them and joy in the Holy Ghost for he that in these things service Christ is acceptable God and approved of men You see what he's saying? You could actually you know, we think of rewards in such an odd way sometimes God would reward you because one of the things you did you were going to think about a missionary going overseas where certain certain food items may be unacceptable and You made a choice before God in your liberty to not eat those things or drink those things in order that you can have an impact in these people's lives. That's the kind of thing that could be rewarded. And you can't say, but I have a right. We're so big on I got a right. Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace and things wherewith one may edify one another. So with that, we'll pause and we'll finish the balance of the chapter next time. But any thought or question about this? It's good stuff, and just make sure you see it beyond the meat and the holidays, because that's just not our current issue, for the most part, unless somebody tells you, well, you can't, you know, celebrate Christmas and all that gobbledygook that Paul very clearly says that we can do. You're speaking of missionaries. We had missionaries over at our house years and years ago, and I think one of the things that caught my attention was that he said the food was too rich for them. So you have to be careful what you're doing to other people because their bodies may not be used to it. So many things are cultural and they can become our conviction. There are convictions before God, but it's really our conviction because of cultural influences. I didn't know what to feed him after that. We have to be sensitive. We have to be sensitive to it. And we get these convictions from a lot of different sources. And God's just saying, man, live by your convictions. Don't impose them or judge other people on them. So it's hard to do. But an important chapter.